


Ginsberg and Cigarettes

by cannibananalism



Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Kissing, M/M, Modern AU, ernst gets handsy, hanschen is a pretentious douche, hard of hearing ernst, it's pretty much a modern rewrite of the vineyard scene, reading some ginsberg, smoking cw, some sign and some speaking, they're both under 18 but I wasn't sure if I had to tag it as underage, vague handjob
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 05:58:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5405600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cannibananalism/pseuds/cannibananalism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern rewrite of the vineyard scene. Hanschen is a pretentious dick who skips class and reads Ginsberg in the bathroom. [The poem is Sunflower Sutra by Allen Ginsberg.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ginsberg and Cigarettes

Hanschen’s eye catches the clock. Three hours left. Three more hours of absolute torture. Good little Catholic schoolchildren sitting in their perfect little rows reading their perfect little textbooks until the bell decides to release them from their brainwashing little prison.

Mr. Knockenbruch has been speaking about the French Revolution for what seems like hours now, and honestly, the only thing about the Revolution that Hanschen actually cares about is how gorgeous Enjolras looks all bloody and sweaty, sitting by his barricade. Even weeks after seeing Les Mis, Hanschen was fantasizing about boning Enjolras at the very top of that damned barricade.

“Mr. Knockenbruch,” he drawls, “may I be excused to the restroom, please?”

“Is it an emergency, Mr. Rilow?”

“Unless you want me to piss myself, sir, I would say that yes, it is indeed an emergency.”

Knockenbruch rolls his eyes and waves vaguely toward the door before barreling right back into his Lafayette rant.

He makes his way down the hall, stopping at his locker to grab his Ginsberg and cigarettes. He passes his older sister Thea’s classroom, being sure to flip her off through the window on the door.

The bathroom, thankfully, is empty. He makes his way to his favorite spot, the largest stall. He sinks to the grimy tile floor. He opens his book of poems, flipping to his favorite. _Sunflower Sutra_ , he reads, _I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the box house hills and cry._ Ginsberg, man, he just _knows_ you. He just gets in your head and _knows_ you.

He’s glad he hasn’t lit his cigarette yet as he hears the bathroom door creak open. He passes it off as just another boy who’s come to take a two-second piss and leave without washing his hands. But when he hears a sniffle and a squeak followed by a shaky breath and another sniff, he knows that’s not the case.

Slowly, he pushes his stall door open to investigate. It’s a small boy he’s seen around a few times, studying in the library or walking around the campus after school. He doesn’t speak to many people, as far as Hanschen knows. He’s heard rumors about him being deaf or something. Hanschen knows quite a bit about deafness, his sister Melitta being deaf herself.

“Hello?” No reply.

He speaks louder, trying his best to stomp his foot while sitting. The boy turns around and Hanschen can see the hearing aids just barely poking out of his ears. He can also see the tears streaming down his cheeks, pouring from his bloodshot eyes. The boy quickly lifts his hand to wipe his face and compose himself.

He gives Hanschen a little wave and turns back to the sink.

He’s cute. Tiny with big brown doe eyes. Hanschen stands and walks over to stand beside him. Their eyes meet each other in the mirror.

_“What’s wrong?”_ Hanschen speaks out loud and signs to the boy’s mirror image. He’s quite fluent, as one would expect, growing up with Melitta.

The boy smiles behind his tears. _“Nothing.”_

_“You can’t expect me to believe that.”_  Hanschen smirks, turning to swipe his thumb across the boy’s cheek.

_“E-R-N-S-T,”_  the boy signs with a small smile.

_“H-A-N-S-C-H-E-N.”_  He wipes another tear. _“Tell me what’s wrong, E-R-N-S-T.”_

“What isn’t wrong, Hanschen?” His voice is just as beautiful as his signing, though untrained and unsteady.

“Come.”

Hanschen takes the boy’s - Ernst’s - hand and leads him to his stall, pulling him down to sit beside him on the tile. The stall door is softly shut and locked.

_“They made fun of me. I told them I was thinking about being a priest or-... or maybe a brother.”_

Hanschen will accept many things. But the church and organized religion… No way. He tilts his head at Ernst’s explanation.

_“You can’t be serious.”_

_“You, too. I should go.”_ Ernst begins to stand, thinking that this has all been a waste of time.

Hanschen catches Ernst’s sleeve and pulls him back down. He sits, their thighs touching.

_“The pious...serene faces of the clergy are fake. They lie to hide their envy. They’re jealous of us. They want nothing more to be free of their...shackles. No. You must let the system work for you, sugar, like me.”_

_“...Like you?"_

_“Yes. Bide your time. Things will fall into place. Understand?”_

_“I think.”_

_“Don’t let them get to you. Okay?”_

_“Yes.”_

Hanschen pulls a stack of tissues wrapped in patterned plastic from his pocket, using one to dry up whatever’s left of Ernst’s breakdown.

_“I can’t go back. They saw me cry.”_ Ernst pulls his blazer tighter around him. Hanschen smirks. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to share these last few hours of the day with someone cute. Maybe he’ll take him home. Study something. Study him.

Hanschen proudly plucks a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. Cheap and easy to get, as long as you have connections with someone legal. His fingers dip into the nearly empty box. Out comes Hanschen’s own monarchical scepter. A fresh and unbroken cigarette. He holds it up like something holy, the Host upon his sinful altar. He pokes it out toward Ernst, asking. Ernst complies, slowly parting his lips and teeth. Between these lips, Hanschen quickly inserts his own mouth, reveling in Ernst’s initial surprise and his eventual hunger. Hanschen pulls away with a dog-like nip, replacing his lips with the cigarette before Ernst can protest his absence. Ernst’s doe eyes grow even bigger, even more reverent, glossy and adoring. The cigarette is lit. Hanschen expects the boy to choke and sputter but he doesn’t. He sucks on the end elegantly, letting his eyes flutter shut as he exhales. Never has Hanschen seen a face more serene and beautiful, more peaceful, like a Renaissance portrait. The smoke clouds around the prince’s face.

_“You’re good at that,”_ Hanschen signs with a devious smirk. A hand reaches out to thread through Ernst’s hair, the other plucking the cigarette from his lips.

_“Thank you.”_ A proud smile.

Hanschen flicks off a bit of ash and places the cigarette between his own lips, taking a deep drag, sucking from the very bottom of his lungs. Ernst’s eyes darken at the sight of Hanschen’s pleasure, at the soft sound of satisfaction that rises from his throat. He dips his head to press an experimental kiss to Hanschen’s throat, looking back up at him for approval. God, those eyes. If those eyes asked him to sink to his knees to pray, Hanschen would recite the Lord’s Prayer forward, backward, and into eternity. Hanschen lets his head fall back against the bathroom wall. His eyes flutter shut. Another drag. Ecstasy. Another kiss, less of an experiment and more of a mission. Ernst stealthily lifts a hand to pull the cigarette from his lips to take a drag himself. Hanschen pouts. He whimpers with big puppy eyes. _Kiss me._ Ernst drapes his leg over Hanschen’s lap, situating himself in such a way that makes Hanschen nearly burst at the seams. He groans quietly, shifting Ernst slightly. He lets his head fall back again, entreating.

“Read to me.” Ernst takes charge. It’s been months since he’s been this close to a human being and you better believe he’s going to take advantage of it. Especially since he’s currently sitting on the world’s most beautiful, most arrogant, most pretentious boy in school.

“What?” Mildly annoyed and subtly ignoring the growing pain in his crotch, Hanschen furrows his brow.

“Read to me.” He holds up the forgotten book of Ginsberg poetry. _“Read your favorite one.”_

A roll of his eyes. _“Fine. Hold it open in front of me.”_

Ernst holds the book at Hanschen’s eye level. Hanschen speaks and signs slowly, taking time to translate it right.

> _I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the box house hills and cry._
> 
> _Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery._
> 
> _The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves rheumy-eyed and hung-over like old bums on the riverbank, tired and wily._
> 
> _Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust—_
> 
> _—I rushed up enchanted—it was my first sunflower, memories of Blake—my visions—Harlem_
> 
> _and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the past—_
> 
> _and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye—_
> 
> _corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face, soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays obliterated on its hairy head like a dried wire spiderweb,_
> 
> _leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,_
> 
> _Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then!_
> 
> _The grime was no man’s grime but death and human locomotives,_
> 
> _all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black mis’ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance of artificial worse-than-dirt—industrial—modern—all that civilization spotting your crazy golden crown—_
> 
> _and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what more could I name, the smoked ashes of some cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs & sphincters of dynamos—all these_
> 
> _entangled in your mummied roots—and you there standing before me in the sunset, all your glory in your form!_
> 
> _A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden monthly breeze!_
> 
> _How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your grime, while you cursed the heavens of the railroad and your flower soul?_
> 
> _Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?_
> 
> _You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!_
> 
> _And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me not!_
> 
> _So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck it at my side like a scepter,_
> 
> _and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack’s soul too, and anyone who’ll listen,_
> 
> _—We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not dread bleak dusty imageless locomotives, we’re golden sunflowers inside, blessed by our own seed & hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our own eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision._

Ernst drops the book beside them and launches himself forward, smashing their lips together until it’s inconceivable that they’re two separate human beings. His hands work nimbly at Hanschen’s shirt buttons and his tie. Hanschen clumsily reaches out to stub the cigarette out on the floor. The bell for the next class rings. They ignore it. Ernst plunges his hand down the front Hanschen’s pants. Hanschen is helpless, completely his. He bites his hand to stifle his moans. They rock together for two minutes, six minutes, ten minutes. Ernst catches the mess with whatever toilet paper is left on the roll.

The bathroom door slams open. “Mr. Rilow, if I don’t see you in my classroom in the next two minutes, you are expelled!”

“...Yes, sir. One minute.”

“What’s taking you so long?”

“My...stomach, sir.”

Ernst giggles. Hanschen places a finger on his lips.

“Two minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

The door shuts and the boys erupt into a fit of giggles and kisses.

“I’m bringing you home tonight. _My parents will be out. I’m paying you back for this. I’m going to fuck your brains out, E-R-N-S-T.”_

Ernst’s cheeks color and Hanschen kisses them both.

_“I feel like we are...Achilles and Patroclus. In love and doomed,”_ Hanschen remarks.

_“Whatever you say, Achilles.”_

  
_Thanks, Ginsberg._   



End file.
